shashasha

A beautiful portrait series of the Ainu, an indigenous people based in northern Japan: “Ainu” by Hiroshi Ikeda.

Ikeda has been photographing members of the Ainu community for more than ten years. His remarkable portraits manage to document the ancient traditions still practiced by Ainu members as well as their everyday life in the context of modern Japanese society.

“A decade has passed since 2008 when I started to frequent Hokkaido to take photographs of Ainu people. We drank and laughed, and at times bickered with each other. Now, these are the people I laigh with while reminiscing on those memories. I reveled in the encounters, and the partings saddened me; the photos seem to me like a mere afterthought.”